Station Crew Gets Ready for New Expedition 33 Trio

The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft carrying three new Expedition 33 crew members, Flight Engineers Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, is poised for a docking to the Poisk module at 8:35 a.m. Thursday. The new trio will join Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko who’ve been residing at the orbital laboratory since July 17. NASA TV coverage will begin at 8 a.m.

Meanwhile, the crew onboard the station is busy conducting routine station science and maintenance. Also, the crew is preparing for the departure of the Dragon cargo craft on Sunday and a spacewalk on Nov. 1 to repair a radiator ammonia leak.

Williams spent the first part of her work day on the VO2Max experiment. That experiment observes a crew member exercising to measure their aerobic capacity. She also visually analyzed samples of microbes collected from an incubator for the Micro-6 experiment.

Williams joined Hoshide for a conference with ground experts to review procedures for a Nov. 1 spacewalk to repair an ammonia leak on a port-side radiator. There will be an Oct. 26 briefing on NASA TV to discuss the 166th spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance.

Hoshide also worked with microbe samples collected for Japan’s Microbe-III experiment. That study seeks a cleaner cabin environment and monitors the diversity of microbial life by sampling surfaces inside the Kibo laboratory. He also prepacked gear for stowage inside the Dragon capsule before its Sunday release. He finally cleaned water in preparation for the arrival of fish aboard the Soyuz TMA-06M for the Aquatic Habitat.

Malenchenko worked in the Russian segment conducting science and maintenance. He collected a urine sample and replaced parts and checked sensors on Russian systems. He also participated in an experiment, Vzaimodeistviye, which observes the interaction of crew members based on their personal and cultural differences.